Extra! Extra! (read all about it)

A week or so ago I prevailed upon my employer to launch a weblog at our site. As we are a web strategy conslting and development agency (or whatever you call a company that helps other companies build or improve their websites), I felt like it was a no-brainer that we should be blogging about what we think about and what we do.
I mean, we already *were*, in the sense that most of us spend some part of our workdays scouring the web or researching fine points of web design and development or following links to interesting topics sent to us by our friends and colleagues outside Extractable. And then often we would send the interesting links we’ve discovered to everyone in the office via an email alias.
My point was that – aside from sensitive communications – we might as well be sharing those links and insights via a blog. Do a little of our thinking in public and in doing so help demonstrate the matters we care about, are learning about, are working on.
As a side effect, it should also boost our findability (or “SEO” as we call it in the biz) and perhaps even help build awareness of our capabilities among our peers and potential clients.
So far the blog is being written by myself and Shimone Samuel, our senior interface architect and an experienced blogger himself. We hope to coax some of our other busy colleagues into contributing as well, but in the meantime we’ll channel them as best we can when they share interesting tidbits with us.
For all of my blogging efforts out there, I haven’t had a channel for pure web design, architecture, and development commentary, and I’m really enjoying it.
I’m still tweaking the WordPress templates and trying to figure out how to get user-friendly permalinks working with IIS, but I’d say we’re off to a decent running start. My friend and hero [Scot Hacker](http://birdhouse.org/blog/), whom I sent the url to last night replied, “Dang, that’s a great blog!” so I think we’re ready for prime time, so please check out Extra! Extra!.

New-school anchor blogs the news business

Brian Williams’ Daily Nightly blog is getting good reviews. (I hope that’s the right link… MSNBC has such fscked up blog URLs.) It makes sense that the anchor to succeed Dan Rather would embrace blogging as a symbol of opening up the newsmaking process. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

Good TV blogs?

A friend of mine who works at a cable network tells me they are considering having some of their reality-show characters start blogging, and he asked me if I knew of any good TV blogs. Not in the sense of TV Squad but in the sense of tied to a specific show.
I couldn’t think of any, and I warned him against the “Captain Morgan effect.”
So, are there any good TV blogs? Blogs tied to TV shows? Do the characters on the OC blog? Or better yet, do actors, directors, producers, or assistants blog about any TV shows?
Suggestions welcome. Please leave a comment.